Joey Mariano, better known as Animal Style within Philadelphia’s chiptune community, is releasing his newest album of tunes… on an NES cartridge.

The album, entitled Teletime, is being pressed on a limited run of 50 carts, and was coded by Philadelphia’s own Don Miller (No Carrier). You can preview the upcoming album on Joey’s official website. Can’t wait to get my hands on this.

Joey’s music never fails to impress. If you’re new to Animal Style, I highly recommend downloading his Open Air EP. It’s free over on 8bitpeoples.

Only one question remains… when’s the release party, and am I on the guestlist?

Congrats on the achievement Joey.

Animal Style
www.animal-style.com

I was walking around GameStop this holiday weekend looking at some of the great used game bargains, and something rather odd occurred to me looking at the boxes on the shelf. With the proliferation of buying content online through DLC (Downloadable Content), or on your device via an App store this maybe a thing of the past and if the game publishers have their way, it will be.

Lately I have been really questioning how long physical media is going to hang around for. This is because of the need for instant gratification in our consumer culture, I mean why go to the store and buy a game when you can simply get on the PlayStation store buy it, and download it to your device in minutes. I began to think how this is all playing to the Game Publisher’s advantage; who no longer wish for us to own something, but will gladly license it to us for the same price as buying the physical goods. Simply put when you don’t buy a physical game you can not resell it on eBay, loan it to your friends or trade it in for another game, which is money out of the game publisher’s pocket.

This is because 9 times out of 10 if you buy something online your technically not buying it, your simply licensing it for your device which your using it on. Your also agreeing to an insane EULA that is almost unreadable to someone is not studying law part time. The copy you end up buying is then usually somehow locked to your device in some way shape or form using DRM. If you’re not familiar with DRM it stands for digital rights management, and it’s what companies use to keep you from doing completely legal things with the media you purchase like lending it out or making a copy in case you lose the original. This is because DRM operates under the assumption that everyone is out to pirate their goods and treats everyone as suspect. Wonder why you can’t simply lend someone that game you bought on the virtual console, that’s DRM hard at work. It basically locks content to the buyer, ensuring that if someone else other than the original buyer wants to play it, they will have to buy another copy. So if you’re going over a friend’s house you can’t simply bring that game with you he has to buy a copy for himself, or if the game really sucks you can’t trade it in for another one. Last year GameStop ALONE made 2 billion dollars off used games alone that is a huge market, and that is money the game publishers feel should be going into their pockets instead of GameStop’s. How do you do this? Get rid of used games completely.

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Last weekend I had the pleasure to attend Philcon 2009 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Cherry Hill. This will actually be my third time attending Philcon, and my first time attending Philcon at its new home in New Jersey. I had been looking forward to this con for the last couple of weeks because of their great roster of guests listed on the homepage, and I was also looking forward to attending a more literary focused science fiction convention.

I arrived at the hotel at 9:30 a half hour after the con began; the parking was free and plentiful which is a great thing. The first panel I wanted to catch that morning was at 10:00 and was The Value of Art: Traditional vs. Digital Media. I have to admit after my first time at the Crowne Plaza; with the way the hotel is set up I am starting to think the issues with registration from Monstermania might not have been a function of the con, but of the hotel itself it just seems like a very awkwardly formatted space to hold a con. I do think some signage when you first come in would be really helpful though, but for all we know the hotel might not have allowed it. One thing I really liked is for people either not familiar with the con or the layout of the hotel they did have an information table which I thought was a very nice touch, in case you had any questions.

Once I found my way to registration it was a breeze, and the pocket guides for Philcon were very well designed and laid out in such a way finding the information you needed was a very easy thing to do. All the panels in the pocket guide also had a well thought out explanation, and made me wish I had more time to see all the great panels: this is a sign of a great con and one that brings the attendees back next year, to try and see the panels they missed the year before. All the panels I attended were well staffed and were well moderated as well, and I also found them all very informative. Some panels did start out as regular panels but transitioned to a more free form discussion on the topic between the panelists and the attendees, which also was great depending on the topic being discussed.

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Hive76 (your friendly neighborhood hackerspace) just moved into a new space, and has some great stuff going on this month. This is the first in a (hopefully monthly) update about what is going on at our space, and in the hackerspace movement in general.

Giant Version of REDACTEDfor Body World: Make:Philly and Hive76 are making a huge REDACTED game for an event with Body Worlds 2 and The Franklin. Saturday 11/ 28 we are painting, and doing some final build work. It’s an awesome project, and (I have to say this) were doing it for the children. Plus giant versions of regular stuff are just awesome!

New Space Party: Hive76 just moved to a bigger space, and we want to celebrate it. So on 12/5 we’re having a small shin-dig at our space. If you want an invite, drop a line to Hive76@gmail.com, and we will send one your way. We’ll have DJ’s, VJ’s, games, Food and Drink, and a bunch of geeky and great folks. We also emptied our account to move, so we’re going to ask for a couple of bucks $10 to cover food and drinks.

Guitar Effects Workshop: If you’d rather rock out on your guitar,on 12/7 we’re going to have a Guitar Effects workshop to build Tube Screamers. If you want to give a handmade gift to a music geek (including yourself) this would be an awesome place to do it. You’ll walk away with a finished Tube Screamer for $50, and all of the know-how to build more.

AVR Class: On 12/12 we’re going to be running a microcontroller class for hacking on AVR chips. Want a rubicks cube robot, and Programmable RFID chip, or a touchscreen picture frame, AVR is the way to go. Did I mention that it’s a fundraiser to help kickstart FUBAR hackerspace? Check it out, It’ll be awesome.

Merry Print-mas: Before Christmas (date TBD) we are going to be open for Merry Print-mas, where anyone can come and use our Makerbot 3d printer to print one free copy of anything at all on Thingiverse. It’s been a great year for our hackerspace, and you all deserve a present. Keep an eye on our weblog and calendar for the date when it gets announced.

Open Hive Wednesdays: And, as always every Wednesday except holidays is Hackerspace Open House at Hive76. 7:30 to 10:30. Come out and Make Things Awesome, and Make Awesome Things.

Quick! Someone call John Williams and cue the Jurassic Park theme. Everyone here at Geek has their own nerdy niche, but none of us are experts on crocodiles. Until now, that is. I’m filling your crazy croc-loving void with some new knowledge. Ready?

Today’s crocs are wickedly smart, stealthy, super-carnivorous reptiles. We’re going to hit rewind to the Cretaceous period for some surprises that will give you goosebumps (and make want to smack some archaeologists). National Geographic ran an awesome article about new ancient crocs they discovered — aka dino-era crocs– and it’s seriously the stuff that geeks dream of: “The diverse menagerie of reptiles ruled Gondwana—a landmass that later broke up into the southern continents—about a hundred million years ago, during the Cretaceous period” (National Geographic).

You may have heard already heard about “SuperCroc“, but among the three new skeletons discovered, some crazy-ass nicknames were handed out to the finds: “BoarCroc“, “RatCroc”, and — my personal favorite– the super creepy “PancakeCroc”.  To quote the most studious of academic sources, I will quote The Dude from The Big Lebowski: WHAT THE HELL, MAN? I get that it’s flat and all, but I’m trying to be sciencey and now all I can think about is French toast.

Note: there hasn’t been a find called ScrappleCroc (or it’s cooler cousin, BaconCroc) but hey! we haven’t made it to Ur (or any other prehistoric land masses yet)… so I’ll let you all know if these intelligent scientists find any more awesome creatures and give them more stupid names…. like MooseCroc! HeadlessHorsemanCroc! CrocsWearingCrocs, JayLenoCroc or the ever-so-elusive TeenageMutantNinjaTurtleCroc. WTF, archaeologists! I feel like you just re-named the T-Rex …Theodore or something.

Read more about these crazy pre-historic dudes after the jump. (more…)

Last Thursday, me and the Geekadelphia crew threw a massive bash at North Bowl in Northern Liberties for our three year anniversary. Thanks to the kind folk over at Hewlett-Packard and Intel, we were able to invite a lot of close friends who have helped the blog grow over the past three years. Nearly 200 people showed up and the party was a huge success. Some folks went home with 8GB jump drives, others with Best Buy giftcards, and one lucky guy left with a brand new HP Envy, an awesome laptop from HP.

Tim has well over 100 photos in his Flickr gallery from the party, and Philly 2 Night even has some photos up. That’s right, Philly 2 Night showed up at a Geekadelphia party. That’s how you know we’re VIP. I know a lot more of you had cameras at the party, so please, forward your photos over! We’d love to share them in the Geekadelphia Flickr.

You might have noticed that Geekadelphia has a bright new look. Please be patient with us as we tinker away at the blog. We wanted to launch our new layout on our three year anniversary, but there’s still a lot of work to do.

I seriously can’t believe that Tim and I started this blog three years ago. So much has happened in that short period of time, both with the blog and our personal lives. We were on CBS3, Tim started his own web design firm. We started bringing on serious writers (Dan!), I started teaching college. Ben Gilbert went on to write for Joystiq, Bianca started freelancing like crazy, and Chris writes for Technabob.

In the past year we’ve been invited to more parties, press events, comic / anime / video game conventions than I can count, and we owe all our success to you, dear readers.

Thanks for staying with us, and helping us grow. You’ve made this labor of love well worth it. Here’s to another year!

Check out some more photos here.

Tim’s Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/bigredtim/sets/72157622841874060/

Philly 2 Night: http://philly.cities2night.com/GalleryDetail.aspx?galid=26184

Our favorite little boutique, Omoi, is joining in the Black Friday madness with some sales this Friday. They stock all kinds of neat Japanese toys and trinkets, and the Geek crew absolutely loves the shop.

• Spend $50 and get a Medicom blind-box toy.

• Spend $100 or more and get an ultra-limited KidRobot holiday Dunny!

• Spend $200 and get hooked up with three free gifts!

The boutique will be open from 11am to 7pm on Friday, and will be packed with gifts from all over. They’ve got some new swag in stock, including Shinzi Katoh imports, Japan-only models of cameras from Superheadz, cozy knits from Coal Considered headwear, new tees from Upper Playground, and more!

Stop by, and tell Liz and her awesome staff Geekadelphia said hi.

Omoi Boutique
www.omoionline.com

I was recently introduced to New Book Day, a webcomic that takes place right here, in Philadelphia. Written and illustrated by local artist Dave Goodman, the comic follows the story of a couple geeks living in Philadelphia “as they try to get through life, find the latest Avengers variant cover and still find time to play Street Fighter.”

From Diego, the comic book fanboy who could easily be found in Brave New Worlds, to Trevor, a hardcore gamer reminiscent of our own Ben Gilbert, the comic’s cast is your classic crew of Philadelphia geeks.

I definitely suggest giving the strip a read. It’s a serial, so the comic doesn’t read like a Penny Arcade strip. More like Diesel Sweeties, with a plot and evolving characters. Give it a look.

New Book Day
www.newbookday.com

In a move that definitely proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that this contest was indeed not fixed, the winner is our outspoken commenter Chris from my Dark Knight / New Moon post yesterday.

Now Chris tell me The Dark Knight rules, or you’re not getting your game. Just kidding. I will be sending you an email for your address and get that game out to you this weekend. Congrats!

We’re not worthy! I stumbled across this excellent tribute to geeks on the open road via SyFy …and no, the stupid new name has not grown on us. These car-owners are stealing my heart pixel-by-pixel with awesome condensed acronyms and phrases. My personal fav is “KHAAAN”.  Jump to see more!

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Ah, at last, Peggle is on Xbox Live’s Deal of the Week. I haven’t been this psyched for a Deal of the Week since Puzzle Quest back in September.

If you’re not familiar with Peggle, read up some reviews on Metacritic. It’s easily one of the best puzzle games out there, and on the Xbox 360, you can play it multiplayer over Xbox Live. Awesome.

Other sweet deals this week include the See the Future DLC for Fable 2 for only $5 and Death Tank for $10.

Now I just have to wait for Gyromancer to go on sale. Sigh.

Via 1UP

For those of you who are already overloaded on the Twilight saga, things are only going to get worse. This weekend Twilight beat The Dark Knight for the biggest opening day EVAR, with a bank of $72.7 million dollars. I was at my local Borders and didn’t see a girl under the age of 18 without a Twilight shirt and I think I even saw a boy wearing one(insert inappropriate “team” joke here). For a film not doing a tent pole summer opening this is an insane feat and a sign that the film has leaked past its teen girl demographic, more than doubling Twilights opening. I could see how this would happen; they have definitely tried to broaden their marketing strategy playing up the action in the film a bit more than the romance that was the center of the first marketing campaign. When I saw Zombieland there was a trailer for New Moon and I actually thought it looked pretty cool, some guys behind me even remarked, “This looks pretty kick-ass, would we have to see Twilight first to have to see this?”

via Variety